


Trail and Truth

by trailtothetruth



Series: The Sapphire Star and the Seeker [1]
Category: Monster Hunter (Video Games)
Genre: Character Study, Fate & Destiny, Light undertones of shipping, but the shipping can also be ignored, mute character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-03
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-08-16 22:23:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16503866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trailtothetruth/pseuds/trailtothetruth
Summary: [Monster Hunter World] Fate entangles around three figures - Valkia: an A-list hunter who fell from the sky, a mysterious Wyverian from the First Fleet, and a Elder Dragon greater than them all. Compelled to find each other, they must follow the trail - and find the truth.





	1. Trail and Truth

Valkia’s arms ached. Her whole body ached. She had no doubt she’d be painted over with multicolor bruises the next day. Her head spun slightly as she stood alone in the heat, watching the Handler run off excitedly.

Footsteps sounded behind her, and she knew she should’ve been defensive, been ready, but the tiredness had seeped into her bones, into her head, and she instead turned her head to see a hooded man staring at her. 

“You’re from the Fifth Fleet.” He said, and at Valkia’s nod, he strode forward further. Dark, coiled hair spilled out from his cloak, and she watched carefully as he removed his hood.

Wyverian. A younger one, too. He stood at the same height as her, but his face was sharp and unyielding, as if it’d been cut from stone.

He glanced at her, no doubt taking in the mismatched eyes that’d been the continual remark of anyone she’d met. But he didn’t comment, simply saying, “The Elder Crossing is upon us again, I suppose.” He let out what might’ve been a huff of amusement. “Strange to believe it’s been forty years since we set foot here.” 

Valkia’s thoughts tangled, trying to do the math, and then her mind caught on something. The staff he carried - it was no staff, she should know. It was a glaive, like hers. Finally, her mouth moved, and she managed to rasp out two words. “First Fleet?”

The strange man watched her carefully. “Yes. I am a hunter as well.” He looked her up and down, his expression unreadable. “It has been a long time since I have seen another hunter. Would you mind sharing your tale?”

Valkia nodded again, swallowing. She didn’t talk, usually. The Handler was usually too concerned with other things to ask her much, and she typically did the talking for her. Even the researchers preferred Valkia to write everything down rather than relay it verbally. But something about the wyverian made her feel at ease.

“Let us find a suitable place, then.” He intoned, and started walking away from the huge slag, into the desert. Valkia stared after him, wondering if she’d made a mistake, but decided to follow him anyways.

_/_

_The mark of the Sapphire Star rests upon her forehead. I feel a strange draw to this hunter, as if some part of me knows that I will see her again. I don’t know why I promised that. But just as something draws me towards this inevitable conclusion, something also draws me towards her._

_/_

Valkia sat back on the bench, staring up into the trees. The drinks had soothed her head somewhat, but there was still a bone-deep tiredness that resounded through every inch of her. The wyverian had been kind as she spoke, not getting impatient when she stumbled through words that she hadn’t spoken in years, just listening and nodding as she told the story of her rise through the hunters, and her journey across the vast sea.

After she finished, a companionable, comfortable silence stretched out between them. She took another drink as he spoke, a touch of amusement lighting his words. “Sounds like my old friends haven’t changed a bit.” He paused, eyes growing more serious. “You are helping the Commander track whatever beast dropped that slag out there, aren’t you?”

Valkia nodded again, and he let out a hmm. “I as well. I.. am able to sense the energies that run through this earth. More than most. It seems very easy in concept. Follow the trail, find the truth. But I’ve been searching for countless years, with little to nothing to show for it.”

She didn’t respond, only offering a slight grimace in response. He sighed. “Your Handler is returning.” He stood, offering a hand to her. “Please inform the Commander that his old friend is safe. But a force compels me to continue, so I must.” He stopped again, face-to-face with her, and they stood there for a long moment.

He studied her face with that intense gaze. “We will meet again, at the end of all things.”

Before Valkia could respond, he was gone, walking past the Handler and the scholars, who’d just arrived. The Handler cast a curious glance at him as he passed by, then at Valkia, but in a rare bit of silence, didn’t comment.

Valkia watched him leave, mulling over his cryptic comment. At the end of all things. He certainly knew more than she did. At the end of Zorah Magdoros? It seemed the obvious answer, but she had a feeling that he meant something bigger than that. Greater.

She turned back to the Handler, putting it out of her mind. She’d tell the Commander about his friend. But she had more important things to focus on now.

_/_

_I knew from that moment onwards - the final stand would be ours. I saw the drive in her eyes and thought, I will see you again.  
I’ve fought a great many monsters in my time, but something tells me she will surpass all of us._

_/_

Valkia’s life continued on. The First Wyverians challenged her - and she succeeded. She’d brought down the apex predators of two great lands. She’d proved herself as the finest hunter of her time, the others said.

Then they drove back Zorah Magdoros. Soaked with sweat, panting, Valkia watched it swim out to sea. It was done. It was over now. The wise wyverian’s words echoed again in her mind. _We will meet again, at the end of all things._ People were cheering, screaming in joy. The Commander’s mouth was moving, but the words weren’t making sense. Other hunters were clapping her shoulder, smiling, but Valkia pushed them away and blindly stumbled towards her handler. She was watching the distant sea, arms braced into the railing. She glanced over, smiling. “Pard! We did it. It’s over.”

Valkia shook herself out of her stupor. “It’s..” She tried again, clearing her throat. The Handler’s eyes widened. “It’s not over.” She shook her head. “More things out there.”

“Are you okay?” The younger girl asked, reaching out a hand to steady the blonde. “You don’t usually.. Talk. Maybe you need to get something in your stomach?” She smiled weakly, but her eyes betrayed her concern. She fiddled nervously with the straps of her book. 

“The wyverian.. said..” Valkia struggled to choke out the words, her throat disagreeing with the sudden use. “It’s not the end.” She gestured helplessly. It was indescribable - the feeling that curled restlessly in her core. “He’s not here.”

“I think you need to get some rest, okay?” The Handler smiled nervously, taking Valkia’s arm and leading her further into the ship.

Valkia craned her head back for one desperate glance. Searching, anywhere, everywhere. He’d said they’d meet again. He wasn’t here. But why should she trust the word of one stranger she’d met out of nowhere? How would he even know about the operation? She tried to squash the feeling, tell herself that he’d been lying, but some sense of doom lingered.

/ 

_I’ve found the place I was searching for. The Zorah Magdoros was heading for something, before the Commission headed it off. I don’t have a doubt that she was at the head of it._  
_I wonder if she’s realized it - that Zorah was not the end.  
_ _As I learn more, I grow more convinced, that together, we will stand at the end of all of this._

/ 

She was right. It wasn’t over. The end is yet to come, she tells herself as she fights off elder dragons, comes inches from dying and crawls back out, as she spits in the face of death and puts her glaive through its eye.

Something changes, though. She no longer does this because she loves hunting. She does it because she must. Because of the Fifth Fleet - the best new hunters - she is the best. As the Third Fleet Master tells her, with a smirk on her face, you are their hope. She forces herself to start speaking again, if only for practicality. Her voice comes back, slowly.

Today, the Elder’s Recess is beautiful in a way that only dangerous things can be. She sits back from working on a dead Daora’s hide, chipping away those metallic scales to give to the Smithy. The sun sets slowly, casting a glow on the world. Chip, chip, chip. It is a relaxing task, a refuge from going back to Astera and being met with expectations upon expectations, people wanting her to hunt more, kill more, do more and more and more-

“Hey, kid.” The voice startles her, and she looks over her shoulder to see the beast of a man they call the Admiral. “Good work here. You doing alright?”

She nods. “Those wind blasts are a pain. But it’s dead. What’s next?” Somewhere along the line, hunting stopped being a passion and started being work. The light that once drove her has faded - now, she does it because she must. Because no one else will. Even the Huntsman was defeated by Teostra. She does not know what will defeat her.

The Admiral chuckles, wholeheartedly, as he sits down next to her. “I’ll tell you, you did a mighty fine job here. Without you, we might’ve been dead.. Several times over.”

She nods blankly. She knows this fact. This is the only reason she hunts now.

“I need you to come with me tomorrow.”

She looks at him with surprise. Valkia knows that the Admiral very rarely works with others - he’d been off on his own for goodness knows how long. “What for?”

“The reason I disappeared off into the Recess while you were taking all the credit for the big boys. I need you to listen carefully, Valkia.”

Valkia frowned, turning to him. “You’ve found something?”

The Admiral nods. “An old friend of mine has been investigating the energy in the earth. The rivers, they’re like blood vessels, all over. And energy has been pouring through them. He went to find the source, and, well…” He pauses. “He found it, big time. And he wants the both of us to accompany him.”

“Who..” Valkia begins. A cautious, precious hope sparks in her chest, as she recalls a figure from what seems like an eternity ago.

“We call him Seeker. He had a message for you, too - I promised our paths would cross again, and so they must. I will be waiting at our convergence of fates.” The Admiral shrugs. “Cryptic, but that’s always been him. It’s an invitation.”

“I..” Valkia can’t find the words. She’d almost forgotten the meeting, so long ago in the Waste. So much has happened since then. So much had changed. 

The Admiral looks at her, mistaking her hesitation. “I know you’re up for it. We all do.”

Valkia nods. “Of course. When are we leaving?”

“Bright and early tomorrow morning.” He gets up, looking out towards the horizon, and laughs. “Keep this between you and me, alright? No need to get everyone in a tizzy. We’ll get in, do what we need to, and get out.”

She hopes it’s as simple as he makes it sound.

_/_

_It is strange to know, at the end of this river, is the end. This is what I’ve been pursuing for so many years. Will I have any purpose afterwards? What will happen at the end? I have so many questions, and simply not enough time.  
I can hope that the Admiral and the hunter with mismatched eyes arrive. I will have to face it eventually, but I hope to do so with them by my side._

_/_

As the Admiral and Valkia approached the camp, Valkia felt her heart racing. It had to be the wyverian she’d met. There was no one else she’d felt such a connection with, even after less than an hour of talking. He’d haunted her for months. The promise that there would be an end, that they would face it together.

She dropped from the wingdrake, and beheld him.

The Seeker met her eyes with a knowing look. “So we meet again, hunter. I followed the trail of energy here, to what I believe is its source. And so have you.”

Valkia stopped and stared for a moment, trying to recover her thoughts. She’d known, of course, but to face him again.. “Yes,” she finally managed to speak. “I have. I’ve explored the Coral Highlands, and now the graveyard of the elder dragons.”

“And what do you think?” He prompted. 

“I think something is wrong with the flow of energy,” she said hesitantly. “It’s not supposed to be gathering like this.”

He nodded. “Good. Yes. An abnormal amount of energy from the vale, from all over the continent, was collecting in one place. When we first met, I was still unsure of where that was. But I’ve found it - it lies at the end of this river.” He gestures to the water, to the boat, and Valkia swallows. 

“This is it, then?” She asks. “This is why everything converged.”

He nods, gravely, and lowers his voice. “This is the end of everything. Let us find our ending together.” His eyes are calm and steady as he offers his hand to step onto the boat.

Valkia holds his gaze as she takes it, her Palico hopping across behind her. The Admiral follows soon after, and it is not long before the Seeker is pushing off from the shore. 

While they travel through the crystal-lined passages, she thinks. Was everything set in motion from the moment they met? Was the message she took to the Commander, all that time ago, also a signal that the Seeker had not found what he was looking for, but who he was looking for? What are they looking for? Energy? More importantly, what kind of danger does he expect to be in if he brings the best of the best?

The Seeker stops rowing to look ahead, and Valkia takes his place unconsciously, the steady pace putting her mind at ease somewhat. They sit in silence for a long time, as the glow around them grows brighter and brighter. At the distant end, it is almost blinding.

“Prepare yourself, my friends. Something is terribly amiss.” The Seeker speaks, jolting Valkia out of her thoughts, and she realizes they are almost to the shore. The Admiral hops out, pulling the boat up against the rocky bank. She jumps onto solid ground, thankful for it, and then looks down the tunnel.

Lined with crystals, the glowing seems to get even stronger down the path. The Seeker sets out ahead. “It’s inside.” He says, and Valkia realizes he is just as nervous as she. It soothes her somewhat, to know she is not alone. They pace steadily down the tunnel until it opens up to a ledge, and a room full of light. She winces, letting her eyes adjust, until she sees what it is - an orb, of some sort, suspended on the crystals in the middle of the room. It glows and pulses violently, as if with a heartbeat. 

“Great Mother of.. Damn.” The Admiral swears, shielding his eyes. The Seeker says nothing, only going forward further, investigating some of the shattered crystals under the orb. “What is this?” The Admiral asks.

Valkia shakes her head, clueless herself. Hearing the Seeker say something, she approaches him, examining the stone in his hand. “What is this…” He murmurs to himself.

And then all hell breaks loose.

Light erupts from the orb in burning beams, scorching and breaking the crystals. 

Valkia dives to the side to avoid being hit, and when she looks back, her companions are nowhere to be seen in the haze of dust and light. 

Stunned and blinded by the brightness, she doesn’t see the beam sweep towards her until it’s too late. She can’t even think, she’s frozen in place - move, move, move--

Someone shoves into her and sends her sprawling.

The beams stop.

The dust settles.

The Seeker lies on the ground.

Motionless. Still as death.

The Admiral snaps into action first, yelling something incomprehensible as he skids to the man’s side, dropping to his knees and feeling for a pulse. After several agonizing heartbeats, he nods, letting out a sigh of relief.

Valkia falls to her knees beside the Seeker. He’s barely breathing, burns scorching their way up half of his body. He took the hit for her. She was going to die. She looks up at the Admiral, before his eyes focus on something behind her, and the blood drains out of his face. Slowly, she turns, and beholds what is staring back at them. 

A face not of this earth.

Yellow-orange, completely alien eyes stare back as the tendrils that made up the glowing orb unravel. Amid a downpour of liquid not unlike the river they’d just been in, it collapses ungracefully to the ground. Shaking out its wings - wide enough to blot out the stars, it seems - and unfurling itself from a heap on the ground, it looks up towards the ceiling, the distant sky, and roars.

A roar loud enough to rattle the stars. They wince, covering their ears, as it let out an unsettling gurgle, and then swung its massive head towards them. 

The Admiral snarls, getting up, his fists clenched, but Valkia dashes forward, grabbing his arm. “No!”

He stops, looking back over her, first with confusion, then with understanding. “Okay, kid. Do what you have to do.” He stoops, slinging the unconscious man over his shoulder and running back towards the boat. “Hold it off as long as possible!” He yells back at her. “I’ll come with help! Just - don’t let it leave the nest!”

And then he’s gone.

The monster takes unsteady, slow steps towards her. Valkia fastens her grip on her glaive, and looks down at her Palico. It gazes back at her with wide, yet steady eyes, and gives her a nod.

She breathes, once, twice, and then enters the battle-trance, and loses herself somewhere within it.

_/_

_I woke up alone, in Astera._  
_I’d found the trail, found the truth - and yet I knew nothing for it. I simply knew of the stone that I found in my cloak, somehow surviving the whole ordeal - that was the sign that it’d been more than a terrible nightmare._  
_Then the news came. The beast of bioenergy - defeated by the hunter with the mark of the Sapphire Star on her forehead._  
_The Admiral came to me one night. He told me how he’d found her. He’d flown into the plateau where they battled, and found Valkia, exhausted, near-death, facing off with the Elder. She’d given it everything she had and more, he said. With one final blow, she’d taken it down as her glaive pierced down into its head._  
_And they both tumbled into the abyss._  
_He’d barely caught her._

__

_Was this trail worth the truth?_

_/_

She wonders if this is what death is like. It is dark, and quiet.

_/_

_Perhaps it is destiny, or fate._  
_I knew from our first meeting that we’d face the end together. I thought that meant we’d battle it, we’d conquer it -_  
_She faced it alone, and that breaks my heart most of all._  
_She hasn’t woken up yet, and it hurts me._  
_It hurts to care this much._

_/_

It comes back all at once.

She wakes up gasping, gulping down air, hands scrabbling for purchase on the wood. The beast, the monster, the fire and light and flame, it’s going to consume her and drag her down into that dark abyss again--

People are stirring and shouting around her. Above them all, someone is yelling at them to get out. She’s hyperventilating, some part of her recognizes. 

“It happened moments ago for her. Get out.” Someone is saying, and doors are slamming, and it’s too much, it’s too loud. Valkia’s trembling from head to toe, tears running down her face, breath coming in ragged pants. She was falling. She was falling down, down, into the darkness -

“Valkia.” Someone’s hands are on her shoulders. She looks up to see the Seeker, her vision blurred with tears. “Breathe. Deep breaths. Breathe.” The gentle repetition helps, and her breathing slows. He gets up from the chair at her bedside and seats himself next to her, shoulder-to-shoulder.

“Can you speak to me?” He presses. “How are you feeling?”

She can’t respond. How could she? To explain all that had happened there - she shakes her head at him, and doesn’t meet his pressing gaze. Her thoughts can barely organize themselves, and she hits a wall of pure terror every time she thinks of voicing it.

He doesn’t push further though. Instead, he hands a mug of water to her, and he talks. He tells her about coming to Astera, about the ship lodged on the rocks that are now high above the sea level. He tells her about how they swam to shore, and looked out upon an uncharted land. He saved the Admiral from nearly getting swallowed by a Great Jagras, he laughs.

She still doesn’t speak, and he doesn’t press. Instead, she rests her head against his shoulder, drinking in the feeling of being alive. She is safe. She is here, in Astera. She is alive. The monster is dead.

Eventually, her eyes grow tired again, and everything fades away into the blackness.

_/_

_The healers shake their heads. The wounds are not all external, they say. Something happened there that damaged her mind and her sense of self.  
I don’t know how to help her._

_It’s selfish of me, but I hoped that, after everything was done, after trail and truth had been found, that I could return to Astera with her, and see my Fleet again, and get to know the hunter that haunted my thoughts for all this time._

_A selfish dream._

_/_

It is the Handler that she wakes up to this time.

She is more composed, this time, but she still jolts back to solidity, after falling endlessly in her dreams, wrapped in the cocoon of those giant, darkened wings. No chance to break free, no chance to do anything but fall.

The Handler’s chatter is a dull undertone to everything else.

“Valkia!” A voice cries, and she squints to see the excitable fiver standing over her. His face is split in a wild grin, as usual, and his voice sends pounding spikes of pain through her head. “How are you? Finally woke up from your beauty sleep?”

“Hey, let her have some time. Go out and grab some food for us.” His partner orders, and he practically deflates, dragging his feet as he brushes through the fabric shielding them from the outside. 

Speaking of outside, there’s a lot of noise coming from out there. It sounds like a party, almost. Like people are.. Celebrating. 

“The Admiral decided to throw a party after the big news.” The other handler says, understanding the confusion on her face. “The thing you found.. It was an entirely new species of Elder Dragon. The Hunter’s Guild has named it Xeno’jiva. And.. officially, our work on Astera is done. You can return home now, if you’d like…” There is an unspoken question there, and Valkia does not deign to answer it.

Instead, she shuffles towards the edge of the bed, hesitantly setting her feet on the floor. Her armor is gone, she realizes. Just the simple leather armor - the same armor she wore all that time ago, when she first landed on the island. How long ago was it? She’s forgotten. It’s been an eternity since killing the- No. She’s not going to think about that, and she swallows back the choking fear that drifts up her throat. Slowly, Valkia attempts to stand.

It’s wobbly at best, and she nearly falls over if not for the serious handler’s arm around her suddenly. Her headache returns twofold, and she considers slumping back into bed, but Valkia steels herself. They are throwing this party for her, after all. The hero of the hour may deign to make an appearance.

The lights outside hit her all at once, and she shrinks back, an arm thrown over her face protectively. It feels like a thousand stabbing claws tearing at her eyes, and she feels water gathering under her eyelashes. Biting it back, Valkia looks up and out.

It has gone very silent. Valkia and the handler are the center of attention, and her gaze flits from figure to figure. Her Handler trots out, beaming at her, and the Admiral is not far behind. The Tracker turns in her seat, giving an understanding nod to her, and even the Third Fleet Master is there, in all her grace. The Seeker steps into view. They lock gazes, and Valkia sees clearly the torrent of emotions swirling in his mind. Guilt, regret, fear.. And yet.. An overwhelming happiness at the sight of her. Still keeping his eyes focused on her, he raises a mug. 

“To the Sapphire Star.” He intones, and the cry is picked up throughout the tradeyard. Everyone turns to their neighbor, wild with happiness, and cheers raucously. The noise makes her wince, yet it’s better now.

The Admiral approaches her, smiling widely, and puts a hand on her back, steering her away from the main crowd. “You’re a sight for sore eyes, Valkia.” He laughs, and she appreciates that he tones down his voice a bit. “Almost thought I’d lost you there.” His eyes darken, and he looks away. “Either way, sit down and eat. You’ve been out for three days, you must be starving.”

And she is. Sitting down with him at a table somewhat secluded from the events and cheering, she finds that her appetite kicks in with a voracious hunger. As she eats, he fills her in, confirming the events that the serious handler had mentioned. 

“Officially? Our work here is done. We’re free to return home. But… our work here is still valuable, and who knows what may show up. To be honest with you, kid?” He laughs deeply. “This is my home. Has been ever since we landed on these shores. The First Fleet.. Those were the days. I did the fieldwork, one did the commanding, one did the tracking, and one did the thinking.” His gaze catches on something over her shoulder. “Speaking of.. I should let you two have a moment. Have a good night, Valkia. Don’t give up.” He gives her a wide, honest smile, and then is gone, brushing past her.

She doesn’t look up at the figure she knows is coming.

The Seeker sits down across from her, and gives her a warm smile. She can’t bring herself to return it. Something inside her is clawing deep, deep down, into that dark pit that she fell into. The words catch in her throat again. She can’t do it. She can’t do it.

“If not for you, I would likely be dead. So would the Admiral, and countless others.” He says, in a tone that indicates he doesn’t expect a response. “I thank you, Valkia.”

She looks up. The fire casts his eyes orange, flickering, like--

No.

“You did a great service for us all. But…” His eyelids flutter, and he lowers his voice. “There have been many tales. But no one dares to mention that, in order to defeat-” He stops when her fist clenches on the table. There is a long silence as they stare at each other.

Her lip is curled in a silent snarl, and he doesn’t say anything more. Instead, he sips from the mug he brought with him, and pointedly looks away from her. He’s expecting her to speak, she knows. She doesn’t. If she stays still enough, she thinks she can see the stars slink through the darkened sky. Distant roars sound from far, far off into the forest. The murmur of the party swells, then falls again. She barely notices when he speaks again.

“You lost a part of yourself down there.”

She goes still. So very still. Her whole body feels cold.

He looks at her - looks through her, and he knows. She knows that. His expression softens.

“I’m sorry Valkia. I thought..” He sighs, digging out a bright blue stone from his bag. “I thought we would face the end together. You were never meant to be alone.” He hands the streamstone to her. 

She stares into it, finding a facet that distorts her reflection wildly, two-tone eyes glowing. She had been alone at the end, and she’d known that it’d end alone. Fate worked out that way. It’d led her to the Seeker, which had led to her becoming the best hunter of the Fifth Fleet, which had led to.. All of this. And yet, she’d been alone at the top.

Valkia shakes her head, making to hand the streamstone back to the Seeker. He stops her, though. “Keep it.”

She weighs it carefully in her hands and in her mind. Half of her is tempted to hurl it over the edge into the raging waters. But part of her also knows that she cannot be scared of it forever. She ignores both, and pockets it, ignoring its unsettling thrum of energy. Glancing back at the Seeker, Valkia sees him watching the party. The look on his face is uncomfortably familiar - of being happy to see others happy, yet also so alone.

“Would you like me to leave again, Valkia?” He asks, and her attention is jolted back to the present. She shakes her head, watching his response. He looks out towards the sea for a long while. “I am a tired man. My purpose in life has been fulfilled.” He laughs darkly. “I think I am just as afraid as you are. I do not know how to come back to..” The Seeker gestures to the party. “Normal life.”

She nods. She doesn't know how to go back to being normal either. She doesn’t know if that means she will hunt the now-easy monsters like everyone else, or.. Not hunt at all. She doesn’t know. 

Without thinking, she reaches out for his hand, resting on the table, and curls her hands beside his. An invitation, and a question, maybe. She’s not even sure what she’s doing, but she knows it’ll be okay with him.

The Seeker lets out a long, deep breath and covers her hands with his own. “We can figure this out together,” he says slowly. It is not a question.

Valkia nods, mutely, and they sit in silence together for a long, long time.


	2. Trial and Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They go around, again and again.

Valkia watches the palicoes sail down into the Coral Highlands, yowling with glee as they went on their latest safari to gather items with a detached air. She’d been at the Research Base for three months now, helping the Third Fleet Master and the scholars conduct research. Three long months away from Astera, away from all of the expectant, joyful faces that proclaimed her as the “Sapphire Star.”

She’d never wanted to be a celebrated hero, with a title and a legacy and a grand home to call her own. But she’d been given it. And the day she walked into that luxurious room, filled with the greatest luxury they all had to offer her, cats playing soft, soulful harps and the water rippling outside.. She’d left. Wrote the Seeker a note, telling him to not worry, and that the room was his. And at the Research Base, it was easier.

The Third Fleet Master liked talking to herself more than she liked talking to others, and Valkia could tell the woman enjoyed not having to fight for every word with an overexuberant scholar. The wyverians there simply laughed and called her Valk, and they welcomed her heartily with every sunrise. No expectations, no responsibility. No world-ending monsters to track down. Just sailing over the beautiful Coral Highlands, underwater yet not, and thinking.

And working on her own personal project.

Her last notebook had been mostly supplemented by the handler - little notes and pictures - _watch out for the poison, weak to fire, found in the Rotten Vale._ But none of it written with the experience of hunting the damned things. Valkia had just kept all of that inside her head, until it seemed as if she’d explode with the knowledge she carried.

And now.. She had time. And it’d helped, a bit, to write it all down. A lot of scribbling was done and a lot of discarded drawings were thrown into the flames that kept the ship aloft. But eventually her sketches had started to look like the monsters she remembered. The scholars nodded approvingly at the ones she showed them, sometimes asking for a copy. 

There was still one monster she could not face the truth of.

The last page of her book had one word on it - _Xeno’jiva._ And nothing else. She’d wanted to hurl the entire book over the balcony after writing it. But she didn’t.

Choking terror still slithered up her throat at the thought, wrapping cold fingers around it and squeezing. She still woke up some days soaked in sweat, a scream trapped behind her teeth, waking from an endless nightmare of falling, falling, falling..

Trying to form words still left her frozen, but at least she found interest in something. She’d known the dark pull of depression before. But she knew to stay at Astera, let everyone worry over her, would eventually drown her. So she’d come here.  
“Ah, Valkia. There you are.” The Third Fleet Master murmurs in her silky voice, breezing past the blonde and to the balcony rails. “How are the sketches coming?”

Valkia silently turns around her current page, showing her a drawing of a lean, muscled form, rough hide stretched around the bones protruding from its skin. The Nightmare, she’d called it in her head.

“Ahh. Nergigante.” The older woman muses, keen eyes examining it. “Excellent detail on the bone structure, by the way. I don’t think there’s many depictions that intricate out there. The scholars may want to hound you for another copy.” Valkia’s face twists, and she hums in laughter. “Learn best by experience, I’m guessing?”

At Valkia’s nod, she lets out a sigh. “We’ll be docking at Astera tomorrow. As always, it’s your choice if you feel like you’ve recovered. But…” She looks up at the sky steadily passing by. “No matter how much you avoid it, Valkia, what you did will be a part of our lives forever. You are the Sapphire Star, and you cannot run from it forever.”

Valkia rises, her lip curling as she makes to leave.

The Third Fleet Master turns to her, black hair shimmering. “At least come with me for the day. You don’t have to speak, Valkia. Just see.”

Valkia locks eyes with her for several tense seconds, internally debating it, finally resting upon the question _What do you want me to see?_ But again, her traitorous throat closes up, and she says nothing, only nodding.

The fleetmaster turns away again, looking out to the sky, and eventually Valkia decides to just take her leave.

She doesn’t know why she can’t speak. Well - that’s a lie. She does. She knows its name. She just doesn’t want to face it, and that is why she cannot speak.

/

_She left. With just a note. Saying the new room was mine, she was going to the Research Base for a time. That was it. No explanation for it. She couldn’t even bother to tell me in person. She just left._

_I’ve put so much into helping her and she just leaves, like that._

/

She watches Astera draw closer and closer. They’re early. She doesn’t doubt it’s partially because of the fleetmaster’s meddling, trying to get her to spend more time here, among the hunters and friends she left behind. But her heart has been replaced with something cold and heavy, and it drags her down, weighing on her soul.

If she has a soul anymore.

Maybe the Seeker was right. Maybe what that monster stole out of her was her soul, and she’s wandering around this world as a living husk of a person, unable to feel joy, to feel the thrill of hunting. Maybe she’s nothing anymore.

If she has one regret, it would be not talking to him before she left, she realizes. He had never asked too much of her, simply just told her to do her best. He had never given up on her, never left her, and yet.. She’d left him. 

It dawns upon her, in a single moment. He loved her. And in hindsight, it makes a lot of sense. The way people always gave the two of them space, yet traded knowing glances between themselves. Valkia berates herself. She should’ve noticed earlier. She should’ve stayed. But… a frown twists her face. If he would’ve told her then, she still would’ve left. She would still have been scared. And…

Valkia shakes her head. It’s not like she has a choice. She has to go face him now, she accepts, as the ship docks in Astera. Leaning on the balcony, she accepts that she is awfully, terribly afraid of seeing the Seeker again. And yet, somehow, she wants it at the same time.

/

_Maybe I can’t fix her. It’s better for us both this way. She gets away from all the people here, and studies monsters in the Research Base. Maybe she’ll stop freezing up when hunting gets mentioned, and maybe she’ll come back._

_I’m afraid of what’ll happen if she doesn’t. I like seeing my old teammates here, but we’ve all changed since we last saw each other. I’m not the same person, and neither are they. She was the only thing keeping me here._

/

“You’re back!” The Field Team Leader crows, running towards Valkia. “Wow,” he exclaims, still talking full tilt, “could’ve at least informed us. We would’ve thrown you a welcome back party.”

Valkia shakes her head no, a smile curving the edge of her mouth. She’s forgotten how contagious his exuberance was - and it wasn’t always a bad thing. 

“Sorry we stole your thunder! We’ve got an arena trial happening soon - wanna come see?” He’s practically bouncing up and down on his feet, and Valkia glances sidelong at the Fleet Master. The older woman shrugs gracefully, giving a motion that could be interpreted as ‘go ahead’.

Valkia shrugs back, and turns to the Team Leader, nodding with a small smile. He cheers wildly. “Fleet Master, you’ll find the Commander at his table. I’m going to get the Star here to the arena. Hopefully we won’t miss it!”

It’s an odd sense of deja vu to signal one of wingdrakes and secure herself into the strap dangling from its thin body. The two wingdrakes start sailing towards the box canyons, towards the Special Arena. A lifetime of memories come rushing as they fly, but Valkia blinks them away with the watery eyes, and twists to look at the Team Leader.

He catches her eye. “Our red-haired friend - he’s fighting a tricky one today. Azure Rathalos. Tempered.” He grins widely. “At this rate he’s going to catch up with you.”

Valkia tips her head, and he catches on quickly. “Tempered? Oh, right! You asked about the tracks you were finding of the normal monsters, but they made your scoutflies go blue. Those are Tempered Monsters. We really started working on them after you left, but they’re older monsters - experienced.” He winced. “They’re no joke. Hits that you could take with a normal Rathalos.. This one will blast right through it. I’m not sure even I could fight that thing.”

Valkia lets out a soft hum, although it’s lost in the blasting winds. Slowly, they begin descending into the box canyons, and her nerves hum with familiarity. Suddenly, the light armor she’s wearing feels very insufficient. 

Tempered. A new challenge. But.. a thought worms into the back of her mind. Can Elder Dragons be Tempered too? What if one showed up? Maybe if a group of them hunted together, but.. She swallows nervously. No need to think about it.

The Arena comes within sight, and Valkia’s nerves rise even higher. Something’s wrong. She can feel it in her gut, and so far her gut’s never been wrong when it feels like this. She turns to her companion, and he’s seemingly calm. It takes a minute longer of flight before his eyebrows furrow.

“Something’s wrong.” He murmurs, urging the wingdrake faster. Valkia does the same, and they drop together at the edge of the crowd. It’s a sea of people, murmuring, unsettled, tense. Something is wrong.

She follows the path the Team Leader makes in his wake. A few people notice her, and gape. Whispers start to spread. She breathes, keeps walking, trying to channel the peace of the Research Base. 

They come to the edge, and the Team Leader freezes, holding out an arm to push people back. Valkia ducks under it, looking out at the too-familiar arena.

The redhead - he’s trapped. The Azure Rathalos has him against a wall - _idiot, why would you put yourself in that position_ \- and it’s slowly advancing on him. His weapon is nowhere to be seen, and the beast has murder in its eyes.

 _“Valkia.”_ The Team Leader whispers, his eyes wide, looking at her, pleading- and she knows what he’s asking, and she sees its glow behind her eyes, the mouth opening up, stunned, nowhere to go-

“Please.” He begs, and reality comes back in, and she moves. 

And she jumps down into the pit.

She hits the ground rolling, and she’s up again.

She’s grabbing the stones left loose on the floor from the boulder drop, and _damn,_ she doesn’t have a slinger.

She readjusts, it’s coming closer to him, flames flickering around it’s maw-

She hurls the rock with all her strength.

It hits the Rathalos on the side of the mouth as it’s preparing to roar. It cuts off, mid-movement, and swings to stare at her. The redhead gapes.

Her world narrows down to her and the blue-scaled beast before her.

She knows this calm. It is the battle-trance.

A voice, somehow picked out among hundreds - _“CATCH!”_

An Insect Glaive lands in her hands.

She is focus. She is deadly, honed force, she is just as _tempered_ as this beast and she is the Sapphire Star. 

She ducks, just before it roars, loud enough to rattle the stars. The crowd gasps and cries out, and the apparent danger becomes clear. She can’t let the monster’s focus divert from her. Or hundreds will die.

No one’s dying today, she tells herself. I am _living._

And then she is moving again, sliding past the crash and snap of its giant jaws. The insect glaive feels right in her hands as she ducks under the thrash of its wing and slashes into the unarmored skin just beneath the wingbone. The Rathalos shrieks, flapping its wings wildly, but it doesn’t quite get off the ground. 

The redhead’s cut the wings. Smart. Just what she would’ve done.

Then, across the arena, her eyes hone in on something. The Dragonator. A smile carves her face in two, as she moves in again, vaulting up off the glaive into the air. Her jump is correct, and she hits the side of its broad wing with a grunt. She’s already moving, scrabbling for purchase on the rough spikes of its back.

She breathes out a garbled word as she stabs strategically on its back. Come on, try to run me off, she thinks without thinking it, thoughts sliding by within the fraction of a moment, everything honed in on the battle.

It starts running how she wants, towards the Dragonator wall, and she pulls herself to her knees on its back, looking at the rapidly approaching wall, calculating, aiming, timing-

The wind flies by her, crouched on its shoulders, wildly careening towards that wall as the Rathalos aims to crush her on it. The crowd begins to scream. This is the show they wanted. She unsheathes her glaive. Now or never.

At the last second, she jumps free.

Her glaive slips against the rough surface of its hide.

This is the end, she thinks.

She hits the wooden slats of the edge, and it knocks the wind out of her, and she prays, hopes, that she’s aimed it right-

She crawls to the lever, faster than she thinks is possible, and yanks it forwards.

The noise of her heart is lost under the scream of steel and wyvern.

It is very quiet.

Maybe her hearing is gone, she thinks.

Maybe she’s dead.

Ironic, to have gone this far, to die the moment she returns.

And then it comes back to her, and she’s forcefully thrown out of the battle-trance, and all the noise hits her with the force of a Nergigante. The crowd is screaming with joy. The steel retracts into its casing with a metallic screech.

It’s dead, she realizes. She drags herself on her knees to the edge to see.

It’s exceedingly dead. It was just how she planned - a hole punched directly through its chest. She eases herself onto her feet, using the glaive as support, and blinks at it. It’s got a flag wrapped around it. Somehow, in all the chaos, she notices that. Every pain and pulled muscle is making themselves blindingly apparent to her. But yet, slowly, she raises the glaive into the air. She’s won.

It feels like a fresh breath of air. She’s living again, and some part of her understands that this is a big step, but not the last, towards recovery. It feels good.

“Valkia?”

She knows who it is before she even turns to face him, and some part of her grows heavy yet light. It is the Seeker. It always has been.

Glancing between him and the glaive, she makes the connection. It’s his. His glaive, that he tossed to her in a last-ditch attempt to.. She shakes her head, opening her mouth to say something but- her throat closes, and she shuts her mouth, not meeting his eyes.

“You left.” He says, somewhat accusationally. She doesn’t offer a response, and they stand in silence. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

You, she wants to say. I was looking for you. But she doesn’t, and offers instead a so-so motion with her hand. Gesturing pointedly towards the dead Rathalos, which the scholars are already scavenging the parts of.

He lets out a long, weary sigh and takes the glaive she offers back to him. “All this time-” He stops himself, looking at the crowd around them. “Later.” His tone is cold, and tired, and it couldn’t have hurt more if he’d slapped her across the face. 

The Team Leader emerges, and he claps Valkia on the shoulders, but his eyes bely his smile. He is terrified, and he is scared, and most of all.. He is angry, at himself, because he knows he could have not taken on that Rathalos. She tries to offer him a smile, but it twists her face in an unnatural way, and she lets it fall.

“Come on.” He shakes his head. “Let’s get out of here.”

The Seeker disappears into the crowd, and Valkia doesn’t follow him.

/

_I don’t know if I love her, and that’s the worst part of all._  
_I loved the idea of the hunter I met in the waste, who was motivated and optimistic and a guiding star. After everything had settled, I wanted to love that happy, driven hunter._  
_Maybe it was selfish of me to expect that after everything that happened to her._

/

The day is a blur for her.

Sometimes, she tries to grasp wildly for the alluring calm of the battle-trance. But it's lost somewhere in the turmoil of her mind, gusting as a Kushala Daora's hurricane. 

She feels as if she is dying and living simultaneously. 

The Third Fleet Master tosses her an uncharacteristically concerned look, but they're being pressed upon by the flood of hunters and scholars coming to meet the Third Fleet. Valkia decides on finding a semi-quiet place as another feast begins, seating herself in a corner and beginning to painstakingly copy Nergigante.

It's relaxing. Study the smooth ripple of muscle and bone under skin - it does not scare her anymore to see its form in her mind's eye. Its wide barrel horns have a gentle curve to them, she remembers, thinking back to the day where she brought a whole horn back. She didn't think she'd ever seen the Forgemaster so excited before.

But she'd taken the horn herself and fashioned it into a glaive worthy of its title - Catastrophe's Light. 

It was the one glaive that'd felt right in her hands, that had become an extension of her body, and the kinsect had been her soul. Strange, then, and unsettling to feel another glaive that felt right. The Seeker's. 

“I didn't take you for an artist.”

She looks up to meet his deep eyes, taking a spare sheet of paper and marking a few words with clean lines. _You always seem to seek me out._

He reads it, lets out a deep breath. “From the very beginning.”

She writes again. _I'm sorry._

He stares at the words for a long moment, his expression unreadable. It feels like hours pass before he hands the paper back, sitting down heavily next to her.

She opens her mouth to speak, again, but the words refuse to come. He catches the motion. “It's not that you don't want to speak. It's that you can't.” He realizes.

She nods. 

He looks conflicted, and eventually just turns away. “You know why.” He sounds somewhat angry. “You just won't do it.”

She doesn't offer a response, and he doesn't talk again. Eventually, she writes three words.

_You loved me._

She doesn't watch his expression, instead staring out at the hundreds of people in Astera, gathered again. 

He is very quiet.

“Do.. do you?” He asks. It is the first time she's ever heard him hesitate.

He does not hand the paper back. She knows what he expects, and she also knows that she can't give him that. So she grabs another piece of paper, writing very small this time.

_It wouldn't be fair to ask you to._

It is not an answer, yet the avoidance of the question is answer enough. 

“You aren't wrong.” He replies somberly. 

_Life isn't fair._

He laughs bitterly. “I knew that the moment I threw myself in front of you. I knew both those things in that moment.”

They sit in silence for a while longer, then he gets up.

“Valkia..” She knows this tone of voice. He is trying to make it easier for her. “I can't stay here any longer.” 

She stares up at him, mismatched eyes demanding an answer, and he does not meet her gaze. “I don't know if I can love you like this. I.. I am not meant to take care of people, and you continue to hurt everyone around you when you stay like this.”

She feels like the air's been punched out of her again. But he keeps going.

“You know where I'll be when you want to face that fear.”

And he walks away.

She lets him go.

/

_The truth is, I still love her._

_She haunts me._

_I've never walked away from the thing I sought, but maybe I am also walking towards it at the same time._

/

No one questions the Seeker's disappearance, nor do they question how Valkia throws herself into hunting afterwards. 

She uses a different glaive, and it does not feel _right,_ but she forces herself to do it anyways. It is not good for her, they say, to force herself onto the weapons. She responds that death wasn't good for her either.

She moves like lightning and strikes like thunder. She takes on two Tempered Bazelgeuse on her own, striking them down with brutal efficiency. Suddenly, her name starts rising again. She may not bond with this weapon, but she knows how to move either way, and she knows these monsters like no one else does.

Hours spent crouching in bushes, doing quick sketches, pointing out traits, theorizing weak points - they pay off. She is the star of every trial event, standing victorious at every turn. She has killed more elder dragons than anyone there.

The Huntsman names her as his protege. She trains with him now, and they defeat a Teostra. Standing in the fading embers together, surrounded by burning magma, he pulls off his mask, revealing a scarred and aging face, and beams at her.

You are relentless, he tells her, laughing in the destruction, you are the power of an Elder Dragon itself.

She considers his words, and goes to the one person she knows will have an answer. 

_The Wyverians are different, think differently. They have the soul of wyverns and the heart of a human. Is it possible for a human to gain this? Have I absorbed something from the Elder Dragon?_

She doesn't dare say its name. But she knows the answer even as she sends the letter on a wingdrake. She is different. She moves faster, thinks faster. The unnatural foresight she noticed has only increased. And she has the inkling suspicion why.

The response comes quickly.

_Valkia,_  
_I've been waiting a long time for you to start seeing, start asking the right questions._  
_There's never been anything like this. But yes, I have reason to conjecture that your Xeno'jiva's soul became yours._  
_Your memories of Xeno'jiva are repressed because you are terrified of what happened there. But the only way we can learn it for certain is if you tell me what happened that day._

She burns the letter, tossing it into a Rathian's fireball as she vaults over it, aiming her glaive down to stab its mouth. It sticks, and the beast screams as she uses her weight to spin around and yank it out of the wyvern's tongue. It reels back, and she moves in for the kill.

She does know the moment the Third Fleet Master speaks of. She dispatches the Rathian swiftly, and then wipes blood off the back of her hand, striding to the edge of the oasis. The desert stretches out in front of her.

She met him here. In this very desert, and he walked with her past this very point to their camp. By the end, she had been dizzy with sun-sickness, but she'd bitten down on her cheek and forced herself to keep going.

And now..

She let out a deep breath, then a scream of rage that echoed over the sand and stone. 

She'd been tired. So very tired, too slow to realize what a bad position she'd put herself into.

She'd been kneeling, trying to catch her breath and heal her minor wounds. And it'd turned to her, knocking her over with a careless paw. It'd towered above her stunned form, and she couldn't do anything, couldn't move, just watched as blue light collected in its throat, creeping up to it's mouth. She was dead, she realized in that moment.

She's crying now, Valkia realizes. Tears pour down her face as she kneels in the sand. When did she fall to her knees? She doesn't know. 

She picks herself up, and starts climbing. Starts climbing to the very top of the waste. Something greater than her drives her to grapple onto the tallest spire of the desert, and look out upon the horizon.

She looks past the highlands, to the mountains high above. To the crystals making up the highest points of the Elder's Recess. And she knows, within her soul, what the truth has been hiding all along.

She’d been ripped out of the battle-trance, unable to move. That infernal, preternatural calm gone, and replaced with the torrent of fear, drowning her-

The Xeno'jiva had blasted her with light - blazing, burning light that should've destroyed her body on the spot.

But the next thing she remembers is tumbling over the edge, the body of the Xeno'jiva falling over with her, and then a figure swooping in to catch her.

She knows the Elder’s Recess is far beyond her sight, but she knows it is out there. And the truth hits her like a sudden blast of wind.

Some part of her goes weak, wants to fall backwards off that rock and tumble to her death. But some part of her only strengthens at the knowledge.

A hoarse, terrible sound rasps out of her mouth. She takes a swig from her waterskin. Tries again. Fails.

So she sounds out the letters slowly, then again, and again, until finally the word comes out, not choked, not trying to hold itself down in her throat.

“Xeno’jiva.”

She has the heart of a human, and the soul of an Elder Dragon. The Sapphire Star is not simply a title - the Sapphire Star is Xeno’jiva, and Xeno’jiva is her.

/

_I have not seen the light in a long, long time. Down in the dark, there are no days, no nights. Sometimes I wonder if it was a mistake._

_Leaving was selfish, but I didn’t know what else to do. How do you help someone who will not speak? I think of her every day and I wonder what would have happened if I’d stayed. Maybe we could’ve learned to live like that. Maybe I could have learned to love her._

_But I left, and I am alone in the dark._

_We both have our climbs to make._

/

“I was wondering when you’d come see us again,” chuckles the Commander, “I’ve heard many tales of your exploits as of late. Some are quite exaggerated, I think, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.” 

Valkia returns the smile. She isn’t quite ready to talk openly yet, but she knows an important step forward has been made. That’s what matters. 

The Commander’s eyes go stern. “You’ve completed every investigation assigned to you. You are now a known figure in the eyes of the Commission, and certainly one of the best hunters of our age.”

“I think she’s taught me more things than I’ve taught her!” The Huntsman laughs, and they lock eyes. Valkia smiles, remembering a moment long past, dancing between embers and flame and death together. 

The Commander nods. “We’ve all decided that we want to offer you one of the greatest challenges for any hunter. This assignment is called the White Winds of the New World.” There are gasps from several observers around them. “This is the ultimate challenge for any hunter in the New World, but few before you have been worthy of it. You’ve been the driving wind at our backs for all this time, hunter. I know you’re capable of this as well.”

He hands her the quest page, and someone claps her on the shoulder. People are cheering. She looks down at it - _White Winds of the New World._ Legiana, Odogaron, Diablos and Rathalos. All in the Special Arena, all in twenty-five minutes. She looks back up at him in alarm, and he smiles. “There have been several White Winds in all these years. Two of them were in the First Fleet. The other three were picked up by the Commission a few years back, taken for a special job in the Old World. You will be the sixth.”

She tips her head, mouthing a word. He catches on quickly. “Who?” He laughs, quietly. “Well, you know the first two. They took it on together, my old friends. The Admiral, and the Seeker.”

Valkia goes very still, feeling as if her heart is not even beating. The Commander smiles, understanding her thoughts as clearly as the one sees the rising sun. “There is no set date for this, Valkia.” He murmurs, just for her to hear. “I know you are not ready at this moment. But you will be.”

She turns, pushing her way through the buzzing crowd that’s gathered, and her feet are moving before her brain catches up, taking her through her motions, gather her armor and glaive, and then she’s in the sky before she realizes where she’s going.

Maybe she’s going home. But she’s tired of hiding. 

She knows who she is. 

She is the A-Lister, and she is the Sapphire Star, and she is the White Wind. 

/

_Facing the light is burning, blinding. Yet I feel a quickness in my soul, one that pulls me to climb back from the darkness._

_I have felt this pull before. It pulled me from Astera, across all of the New World. It led me to Zorah Magdoros, and to Valkia, and it led me to her again, and to Xeno’jiva._

_Even I have forgotten my own name. I am the Seeker. Does anyone even remember the White Wind anymore? Has the title passed onto someone else? In my time, defeating the Rathalos and Diablos was achievement unparalleled. I have no doubt with the discoveries of hunters like Valkia, those limits will be pushed, and broken._

/

She treads on feather-light feet towards the river where it all began. The boat is still there. Still right where they’d left it on the fateful day they’d met Xeno’jiva. And no sign of the Seeker. But as she looks down the tunnel, a small smile spreads across her face. Yes, of all people, he would have her retrace her steps back to where they met, where he told her _Let us find our ending together._

Yes, this was the ending. 

She steps into the boat, feeling a strange sense of deja vu. But there is no fear anymore. No anxiety. It is not the battle-trance, but a greater, deeper peace. 

She starts rowing down the still, glowing river. 

As she rows, answers come to mind from questions asked long ago. Yes - everything was set in motion from the moment they met. Somehow, she, the Seeker and Xeno’jiva were intertwined inextricably in fate. They had always been destined to come to this point, Xeno’jiva living within her, and her growing to become truly herself, and him finding what he’d been looking for all this time; Xeno’jiva, which was now her.

The blinding light darkens as she continues on further, and she feels like a lonely voyager on a dark, tranquil sea. She stops rowing, letting the boat drift, because she knows what is coming next.

Rounding one last bend, the familiar shore comes into sight. A familiar figure kneeling in front of a fire, his back to her, at the makeshift camp she’d landed at so long ago. Valkia breathes. In, out. In, out.

The boat thunks against the shore, and he straightens up, but doesn’t turn around. Stepping onto the shore, Valkia is close enough to see the rise and fall of his shoulders. Letting out a deep breath, she speaks again. 

“We will meet again, at the end of all of this.” She takes another breath. Her heart is racing, but her soul is steady. “Is this the end?”

He turns to face her. He is different now. His face is gaunt and his shoulders are thin. The circles under his eyes are dark and prominent. But his expression is the same as it was always - full of hope, and a sad, quiet relief. “Now you seek me out. Yes. Yes, I believe.. This is the end.” His legs give out, and he sits down heavily next to the fire. “I did not ever think it would be like this, though.”

Valkia takes one, two, three steps towards him, kneeling at his side. “You’re..” Her throat seizes up. “..different.”

“So are you.”

“You’re injured.”

“I found where Xeno’jiva fell. It disappeared.”

“I know.”

He stops, then, looks at her. She is reminded of the Third Fleet Master’s intense, searching gaze, and reminded of her order to see. “What do you know?” He asks. “Something is different, but I cannot place it.”

She lets out an weary sigh. “I.. something, happened, I think, the Fleet Master thinks..” The words are hard, and talking this much suddenly doesn’t help. “I am Xeno’jiva now, in spirit. I think, I think differently, know things that I shouldn’t..”

His eyebrows rise, but he looks her over again. Looking deeper, this time. “Like a Wyverian, in concept. Some Wyverians struggle when they are very young. The human and wyvern in them do not always agree, and they suffer from it. You had to accept both parts of yourself in order to get past that block.”

She nods to his thin frame. “What happened?”

The Seeker winces, looks away. “I went to find the Xeno’jiva’s body. It felt like years in the darkness. I didn’t find it, but I..” He grunts, pulling something out from the darkness. “I found this.”

Something within Valkia goes very still at the sight of the glaive.

Her glaive.

Carved by her hand from the horn of a Nergigante, the creation she spent hours slaving over, showing it to the Forgemaster and earning a hearty whoop of approval.

She takes it in her hands and a thousand memories come rushing back. She’d built it before she took on the three elder dragons, and it’d been part of what kept her anchored in the battle-trance. But she also faced Xeno’jiva alone with it, and she remembers stabbing, slashing, screaming desperately, holding it up hopelessly to block that final blast-

She doesn’t remember anything after that. But her glaive is untouched, unburned. She stares at it for several long moments, and at first she doesn’t realize she’s crying. Sobs shake her shoulders as she stares down at the weapon that became her only hope. She hadn’t had the courage to ask anyone about it, and like anyone else, thought it’d been lost forever. She’d stood alone against what seemed like the world, with only her glaive in her hands, and she’d never felt so alone in her life.

The Seeker’s looking at her with concern in his eyes, and she manages to whisper out a strangled “Thank you.” His smile is tentative and small, but real, and she composes herself slightly. “Your glaive - I’ve never had someone else’s feel natural.”

He lets out a little laugh. “I don’t know how to explain what I felt when I saw you jump down. I saw someone move, and I knew, somehow, without even knowing - it was you.” He pauses. “It was always you, Valkia.” The Seeker shifts closer, shoulder to shoulder. “I was following something all this time, and I don’t know if it was Xeno’jiva or you. Now.. both.”

Valkia freezes up a bit at the contact. She’s not used to anyone touching her with care. “I… I don’t know what I was following, either. I searched for that.. Something, for a long, long time.” She wipes away a stray tear.

“Valkia?”

“Hm?”

“Are you happy?”

It’s an odd question, she thinks. Of course she’s happy. She’s faced her fear. But… Her face distorts. She’s faced her fear, but she hasn’t conquered it. Something within her still quivers at the thought of Xeno’jiva, but she can think about it now. She can speak again. But she also faces a great amount of pressure, and knows that this is not the end of her hunting. She still has much to do, much to discover, and she realizes, with a startling shock, that she’d like to do all that with the person at her side.

He’s still watching curiously, waiting, and so she answers, speaking carefully. “Not yet. But, I think, I could be happy.”

He nods, going back to comfortable silence.

But in all that silence, there is a reason she knew she had to talk to him. “I am to be the next White Wind. I have to fight Legiana, Odogaron, Diablos and Rathalos.” She shakes her head. “I want to do this with you. You are..” She struggles for words, looking sidelong at him. “The closest I have felt to a partner.”

“Congratulations.” He smiles widely at her, but it drops away quickly. “Not even the Handler? She seems to have a great deal of fondness for you.” He scowls. “I think she was jealous of me, when I stayed with you.”

“You stayed with me?” 

The Seeker freezes only slightly. “When you hadn’t woken up yet. I thought…. I felt as if it was my fault, that I was responsible for everything that happened to you, and the least I could do was stay at your side.”

Valkia blinks a couple times, struggling to process the concept. “I… no, no. I decided to do.. All of that. For the hunters back home. For Astera, for the Admiral.. For you, mostly.”

“I wasn’t there for you when I said I would be. I failed.” He doesn’t look at her, staring pointedly down at the floor, hair spilling down and shadowing his expression. 

“You were there when I needed you. If I’d taken that blow, do you think you or the Admiral would’ve been able to hold Xeno’jiva off? It had to be you, but that doesn’t make it any less meaningful.” She puts a hand on his arm, catching his attention. “I will never forget.. You doing that. You laying there. I thought you were dead. I thought I’d..” She shakes her head. “We’re here.”

“We are.” He pauses, looking up at her. “How long has it been?”

“A year.” She tells him. 

“A year,” The Seeker repeats, his coiled hair shifting around his shoulders as he hunches over. “What am I now? Fifty-seven. Young for a Wyverian. Old for a human. And you want me as your partner.” He shakes his head. “I… Valkia.”

“I’ve risen far beyond what I was. And I still.. I need to go further. You are- We are- bound to eachother, somehow.” She stumbles over her words, kneeling next to him. Her throat closes up, seeing moments long ago. “I don’t want to be alone again, Seeker.”

He looks up at her. “Neither do I. I’ve spent the last twenty years alone. And somehow.. Meeting you, seeing someone as alone as I was.. It made me feel alive again.”

She nods, reaching out blindly, squinting through tears. “No more being alone.”

The Seeker leans into her hand grasping his shoulder, tipping his head close. “No more. I will come home with you, Sapphire Star. You will become the White Wind, and you will continue to be an inspiration to us all.”

Somehow, the Seeker’s hands find hers again, and they curl together in a desperate embrace, feeling their story coming full circle again. Because that’s all they ever seem to do, Valkia thinks. They go in circles, one dancing away from the other, until they finally meet again. 

Xeno’jiva, and the A-Lister, and the Wyverian Hunter, around and around, again and again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you.  
> the sapphire star and the seeker have more life to live and more time for the trail and the truth, but this part of their journey has ended.

**Author's Note:**

> the first part of a hopefully longer series. the star and the seeker have far to go, and much to do.  
> [updated 12-24 for formatting - ao3 is weird.]


End file.
